Critical Essay by Sarah Sceats

SOURCE: Sceats, Sarah. “Flesh and Bones: Eating, Not Eating and the Social Vision of Doris Lessing.” In Theme Parks, Rainforests and Sprouting Wastelands: European Essays on Theory and Performance in Contemporary British Fiction, edited by Richard Todd, pp. 139-49. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000.

In the following essay, Sceats examines the representation of eating and food in Lessing's writing, particularly in terms of their role in interpersonal or social relationships.

[…] there is a terrible gap between the public and the private conscience […]1

‘Dis-moi ce que tu manges,’ wrote Antoine Brillat-Savarin in 1825, ‘[et] je te dirai ce que tu es …’.2 The potent suggestiveness of food is one of a writer's richest resources, and has been drawn upon and exploited ever since Homer. Literary food and eating, often enticingly (or revoltingly) evocative, are of...